Seeds Make Weeds; FDR and Talk Radio - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

I've talked a lot about bird feeders, I know. But last garbage collection day, I put out two perfectly good bird feeders from which many birds had happily eaten.

A neighbor picked them up before the trashwights came. I tried to get his attention but he drove off before he noticed me. Because I wanted to explain why I was getting rid of them.

It's pretty simple. They were both the kind of feeder where birds perch on a little roost (or roost on a little perch) sticking out in front of a hole in the face of the tube.

That kind of design is fine if there's a tray under the tube to catch the spillage from the holes. But with these two feeders, there was no tray.

Birds eat like finicky two-year-olds. They like what they like and reject what they aren't in the mood for. But when they like something, they eat with enthusiasm, and the food gets splashed around.

The result is a lot of seeds dropping on the ground -- unless there's a tray to catch most of them.

If you have your birdfeeder on a porch or patio or deck, you now have pools of birdseed. This is fine at first, because ground feeders clean up for you.

Only they aren't efficient -- they clean up those spilled seeds the way two-year-olds pick up their toys. You can hardly tell they tried.

So I found myself sweeping up five or six dustpanfuls of seeds every couple of weeks. I realized that I was paying birdseed prices for what ended up as garbage without any intervening alimentation by birds.

It was worse where I had one of those trayless tube feeders over soil. Seeds that are birdfood in the feeder become weeds when they're growing in the soil underneath it.

Now that squirrel baffles (and distance from sturdy branches and other launching pads) had solved my squirrel problems, I could hang some open tray feeders along with the small-bird-only cage feeders.

So I ditched the perfectly good (but spilly) feeders, and while there's still some spillage even with the trays, keeping the ground feeders happy, it's down to about five percent of what it used to be. (So maybe it's eight percent. It's not like I care enough to measure.)

I just wanted my neighbor to know -- those birdfeeders he picked up work very well. The birds like them. He just needs to know that along with them comes a mess, no matter where he puts them.

I've been reading H.W. Brands's biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Traitor to His Class, which is not as biased against Roosevelt as the title might suggest. After all, being a traitor to the upper class is considered rather praiseworthy on the extreme Left.

In any event, I was struck by a passage on page 223, which took note of the fact that Roosevelt saw early on the importance of the new technology of radio, which was spreading through the country in the late 1920s.

As Roosevelt said, "Whereas five years ago 99 out of 100 took their arguments from the editorials and the news columns of the daily press, today at least half of the voters, sitting at their own fireside, listen to the actual words of the political leaders on both sides and make their decision based on what they hear rather than what they read.... In reaching their decision as to which party they will support, what is heard over the radio decides as many people as what is printed in the newspapers."

Roosevelt found that by mastering radio, he was able to develop living-room intimacy with the voters of America. His aristocratic accent didn't hurt him -- radio announcers all talked that way; only entertainers used "natural-sounding" speech on radio. Instead, by using a medium that was not yet taken seriously as a source of news, Democrat Roosevelt was able to get around the newspapers which, in most parts of the country, were staunchly Republican.

Well, it occurred to me as I read this that radio had its day, and then television came to rule. The power elite no longer despised the broadcast news, but instead came to fear it. Reagan used television as Roosevelt used radio, to reach the people over the heads of the media establishment.

To keep their control, the increasingly Leftist elite began to cut off nationwide television access to leaders they disapproved of. They refused to carry some, then most, presidential speeches -- when the president was Bush. (Which didn't hurt Bush, because he was so terrible on TV; it might have helped him.)

More to the point, television news broke the back of TV-dependent politicos by reducing everything to "sound bites" of only a couple of seconds, then framing it all in commentary that they controlled.

But once again, as in Roosevelt's time, radio came to the rescue. The government decision in the 1970s to require all new cars sold with radios to have the FM band as well as AM. This little change essentially killed AM music radio, since AM isn't as good at carrying music as FM.

So there were all those AM stations whose value had plummeted, struggling to find programming that would allow them to compete with the FM music stations. Along came talk radio -- speech worked fine on the radio, and AM carried over long distances at night -- and the AM stations survived, provided their talk radio wasn't just an echo of what people could already get on the TV networks.

With network television and most newspapers hostile to conservative values and political views, a large number of ordinary people were -- mostly without realizing it -- hungry to hear an approach to current events that wasn't so openly hostile to their values, that wasn't so propagandistic in trying to sell them on ideas they didn't like at all.

It wasn't a politician who was able to bring them what they wanted -- it was Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh was and is a creature and creator of radio. (His television show failed and deserved to.)

It was radio, on hundreds of local stations, that gave Americans an alternative to the lockstep media. Only after Limbaugh's phenomenal success at influencing politics did Rupert Murdoch create the Fox News Channel for cable TV, with conservative and libertarian commentators at night and scrupulously balanced news coverage all the rest of the time (which independent monitors have verified again and again -- Fox News is the only television coverage that even tries to be even-handed).

It is hard for us today to appreciate what it meant to Americans to hear Roosevelt talk to them warmly, intimately, on the radio. They came to like and trust him -- even people who didn't actually like his political programs.

My parents, for instance, were no fans of his policies, but I remember as a child hearing them talk about his fireside chats and, while my dad jokingly mimicked Roosevelt's voice saying, "My friends -- and you are my friends," I got the distinct feeling that listening to Roosevelt meant something to my folks. My dad turned twelve soon after Roosevelt's first inauguration; his teenage years were punctuated by those fireside chats on the radio. Everyone heard them.

Limbaugh isn't alone on talk radio now; there are many voices with their own followings. Some are every bit as scary-crazy as the Left would have you believe, but most are reasonable and many are actually rather centrist -- far more open-minded than the Left is, or than the Left is capable of recognizing, since our "intellectual" elite is marked by the most pervasive and unyielding closed-mindedness since the slavery advocates of the years leading up to the Civil War.

Some politicians learn these lessons: Huckabee has been working hard on getting the sneakiness and sliminess out of his public persona through his weekend television show on Fox. I think the sneakiness and sliminess are still there, but they are now well-concealed from view.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is as stiff and cold onscreen as ever, and Sarah Palin still looks like a deer in the headlights. Too bad; Romney and Palin are likely to be media roadkill in the runup to the 2012 election, and Huckabee will be well-placed to seem warm and avuncular and trustworthy.

Remember that in North Carolina, Jesse Helms came to public view on talk radio. This was a singularly unattractive man onscreen, but Helms learned how to control his persona when he spoke. I remember his first debates with Jim Hunt in the senate race of 1984. I watched for five minutes and switched off the television. There was no point in watching more. Media-savvy Helms was destroying Hunt in the image race, regardless of the content of the debate itself.

Hunt got fierce and angry; Helms, who knew how to control his media appearance, came off as patient, warm, friendly, avuncular; he never showed anger toward Hunt. Huckabee may find, as Helms did, that you can be off the deep end to the Right but still seem electable to moderates just because you seem so harmless and nice.

Talk shows defeated the sound bites of "mainstream" media, and their candor and energy trump the rehearsed and/or teleprompted speeches of politicians. Those who can talk warmly over the air, sounding unrehearsed even as they read from notes or prompters, can build a following.

Roosevelt knew it and used it -- that's much of the reason he was able to pull off four presidential election victories.

Learning to master new media doesn't mean you're a good person, or a bad one. Besides Roosevelt, another man who mastered the power of radio was Adolf Hitler. But Winston Churchill also proved to be brilliant on radio. It was the foundation of C.S. Lewis's popularity, with a series of broadcasts he made to strengthen the Christian faith of Britain in the war against Nazism. Whoever masters the medium can use it, for good or ill.

Here is the unique power of radio: It is the voice alone. It's not just in fantasy novels that the human voice as magical power. We who listen to audiobooks know that hearing a story read is more powerful than reading it to yourself; in many ways, it is more powerful than movies that tell the same stories. Because your eyes can be engaged in other activities -- driving, knitting, cooking, eating -- while you listen to radio or other pure-audio presentations, they can sustain your interest in what is being said for much longer than visual media can, since they require you to watch and lose power with distraction.

Talk radio has revived and sustained public discourse from the Right and Center of American politics during an era when only the extreme Left is represented on most television and in most newspapers (and universities, schoolrooms, movies, and television shows). The result is an extraordinarily well-informed populace that has no intention of being told what to think. The Left dismisses "talk radio" as extremist propaganda, not realizing (or perhaps realizing all too well) that it is the antidote to extremist propaganda from the Left.

Even now, radio (like its twin, internet audio) is still underutilized as a means of bringing all points of view into public discussion. My kids grew up listening to half-hour audioplays as they went to sleep in their rooms. Imagine that: letting kids hear professionally performed dramas and comedies that allow them to close their eyes. Why isn't there radio programming for children at just the hour when they're likely to be going to bed?

Teenagers will watch all kinds of wonderful nonsense on YouTube; what people often miss is that they often listen to it while doing homework. The audio market and low-budget video market are bigger than anyone thinks -- as long as it's really well written and has a core of truth.

Mark my words -- while Hollywood keeps trying to edge farther away from traditional values in huge-budget projects, radio and cheap internet video can offer the entertainment antidote on far lower budgets. All that is required is that the writing and performing be excellent and never preachy, and the price be as close to free as possible.

My wife and I watched one more episode of Harry's Law, and the verdict is in. Series writer David E. Kelley is off the deep end. It's not just that he inserts knee-jerk Leftist dogma in every episode. Now he's flat-out lying about America -- or else he has lost any kind of contact with reality.

In the series' second episode, Harry (Kathy Bates) is defending an old woman who robbed a liquor store at gunpoint. Her defense is that she was starving and had no alternative.

Excuse me? Has Kelley ever been to Cincinnati (where the story supposedly takes place)? Does he think there's no welfare available to the poor? Between state welfare programs and local non-government organizations, does he really believe that the only choice of poor people is to rob stores at gunpoint?

It is simply asinine that Kelley's puppet prosecutor did not point out all the welfare sources that could have kept this woman fed -- without her having to resort to armed robbery.

In other words, Kelley's television shows do not take place in the real world. Instead, they exist only in the Leftist fantasyland where the American poor still live as if it were 1889. Or even 1935. That place only exists today in their imagination.

In a way, Kelley and his ilk are confessing something rather awful. The Left has had control of American government and the power elite for decades. If it's all still as bad as ever, then that would suggest that all the money we've poured into the Leftist agenda has been utterly wasted. Where did it go, if it has accomplished nothing, as Kelley and his fellow deniers-of-America-as-it-is claim?

Clever dialogue and good acting cannot make up for complete stupidity and/or deliberate lying. Gilligan's Island knew it was dumb; that's why it was funny. Kelley has made his show even dumber, but he thinks that he's smart, the way a drunk claims to be sober even as he reels along bumping into everything.

There are smart shows on television. But David E. Kelley isn't writing any of them.

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Rabbit Year, USO, Sherman, and Verne

Thursday, February 3^rd --Chinese New Year

The traditional Chinese Lunar Year 4709 begins at sunset on the day of the second new moon following the winter solstice. It's the Year of the Rabbit. So if a bunny dwells in your heart, this will be a good year for you -- surrounded by family and friends, visited frequently, and utterly without conflict. If this doesn't sound like you, then clearly you were born in the wrong year.

In the cycle of the Chinese Zodiac, the animals for the coming years are:

2012: Dragon

2013: Snake

2014: Horse

2015: Goat

2016: Monkey

2017: Rooster

2018: Dog

2019: Pig

2020: Rat

2021: Ox

2022: Tiger

For those of you planning to have children in the near future, pick your year carefully. Especially be careful of having babies in the year of the Snake -- such children are "seductive, gregarious, introverted, ... insecure, jealous, slightly dangerous." Gregarious and introverted I can understand: "Hey, how you doin'? Great! Now leave me alone." I just don't think you want to raise an insecure, jealous, seductive, slightly dangerous child.

Fortunately, the Chinese Zodiac is just a lousy as the western one at predicting character. For more information (and/or amusement), check out http://www.chinesezodiac.com/signs.php.

"The Day The Music Died": On this day in 1959, rock-and-roll legends Charles Hardin "Buddy" Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson died in the crash of a private plane piloted by 21-year-old Roger Peterson, who also died. Holly chartered the plane, and both Valens and Richardson begged or coin-flipped their way onto the plane in place of Holly's backup musicians, Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup; they lost their seats but won their lives.

Buddy Holly's death is always treated as the great tragedy, but in fact Ritchie Valens, a Mexican-American born Ricardo Esteban Valenzuela Reyes and attending school in California as Richard Steve Valenzuela, was potentially the more important musician, and certainly the more skilled. He was known among his friends for adding impromptu riffs and new verses and choruses to popular songs. His first monster hit was "Donna," but it's the B-side, "La Bamba," that is best remembered today -- a Mexican folk song that Valens transformed into a Chicano Rock classic.

Valens had a strong fear of flying, probably originating when two airplanes collided over the playground at his junior high in the San Fernando Valley; falling debris killed or injured several of his friends. Too bad he overcame that particular fear.

It was Don McLean who tagged this event as "The Day the Music Died" in his long, strangely cheerful song "American Pie." However, it is widely accepted that the music did not, in fact, die that day, nor even on the day Bob Dylan performed in public for the first time (the music merely covered its ears and cried).

The federal income tax was born when the 16^th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on this day in 1913, giving the federal government the right to tax American citizens directly -- a power that the Constitution had specifically denied. The story is that there was talk of putting into the amendment a ceiling of ten percent of income, but this was dropped on the theory that a ten percent ceiling would almost guarantee that the tax would rise to that absurd level; without the ceiling, it would "probably" never rise above five percent. Kind of wish we could go back and shake them hard and say, "Put in the ceiling, you clowns!"

Beloved American artist and illustrator Norman Rockwell was born on this day in 1894. He was especially noted for his realistic and homey magazine cover art for the Saturday Evening Post. His slightly elongated human figures showed great humor and affection, with stories implied in every piece. For a good sampling of his art, check out http://sn.im/rockwellgallery. (Full URL:

http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=&q=norman+rockwell+paintings&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=VqVJTe3KDsGC8ganrrGMDw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CEsQsAQwAA&biw=1149&bih=859 )

Friday, February 4^th -- USO Day

The USO (United Service Organizations) was founded 70 years ago today, in 1941, as a civilian agency devoted to providing support worldwide for those serving America in every branch of the military, and their families. It was disbanded in 1947, but was revived in 1950 for the Korean War, after which it continued to provide peacetime and wartime service to the people of the American military.

The USO's slogan on its website is "Until Every One Comes Home," a sentiment all Americans can share. Movies from World War II depict the USO providing safe (and non-alcoholic) venues for soldiers, sailors, and airmen to socialize with local people near where they were stationed -- the natural starting place for wartime romances and heartbreaks.

The USO was most noted, however, for putting together traveling shows for servicemen in remote and/or dangerous locations. Bob Hope was merely the most famous and consistent of the many entertainment stars who traveled into war zones and isolated locations to put on variety shows for the troops.

My father has told us stories of some of the performers who came to where he was stationed on Guam right after World War II; his favorite story was of Danny Kaye; what impressed me most was the fact that (for comic effect) Kaye sang an entire song exactly one half-step out of key. This is hard to do, though the feat has accidentally been duplicated several times on American Idol.

It's obvious what these shows did for the soldiers, but it's worth pointing out that it was a great benefit to entertainers who otherwise would have felt themselves to be shut out of the war effort. While many entertainers enlisted and served in the military, many others -- especially women -- found the USO to be their primary means of contributing to the national war effort.

National Wear Red Day, as a part of American Heart Month, focuses on women, with the slogan "Go Red for Women." Each year cardiovascular diseases claim the lives of nearly 500,000 women, and in recent decades has become more dangerous to women than men.

According to the Women's Heart Foundation, strokes kill more women than men each year; under age 50, women's heart attacks are twice as likely as men's to be fatal; and at every age, 42% of women who have heart attacks die within a year, while only 24% percent of men do.

Six times as many women die each year from heart attacks as from breast cancer. So wear red today as a reminder to women that heart disease is not just for men anymore, and it's just as important for women to take care of their cardiovascular health as for men.

Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913 in Tuskegee, AL. A seamstress who was active in the NAACP, she tested the oppressive segregation laws in Montgomery, AL, in 1955, by refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man during a ride home from work. This was a law that made a mockery of the supposed premise of segregation: "Separate but equal."

Parks was arrested, found guilty of disorderly conduct, and fined $14. This led to a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system, lawsuits, and an eventual Supreme Court decision decreeing segregation to be unconstitutional. Rosa Parks was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, and is the only American woman to have lain in state at the US Capitol Rotunda after she died.

Saturday, February 5^th -- Dump Your Jerk Week

Many women (and some men) hold on to a bad relationship just so they won't be alone on Valentine's Day -- but Valentine's Day alone is better than Valentine's Day with somebody who exploits you while treating you badly. Dump Your "Significant Jerk" Week gives you seven days "to take out the garbage" and get rid of a selfish, unhelpful, unloving boyfriend or girlfriend.

Here's a hint: If you find yourself avoiding him or her, or hiding your money and credit cards, or doing the only work that's ever done in your relationship, you don't have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you have a parasite, and it will never get better.

British statesman Robert Peel was born today in 1788. As British Home Secretary, he created the modern police force, both in Ireland (where they were called "Peelers") and in London ("Bobbies"). Prior to that time, urban police work was done by the military (in times of major unrest) or by citizens who "did their duty" by chasing down perpetrators when somebody yelled "stop, thief!" Professional uniformed policemen were a vast improvement, putting an identifiable face on authority and placing limits on what had previously amounted to mob rule.

Later, as prime minister, Peel repealed the notorious Corn Laws, which had artificially maintained a high price for grain in order to protect British farmers -- while leaving the working class hungry and broke. Since Peel was a Tory, many regarded this act as a betrayal, but he reconstituted his supporters as the Conservative Party (still called Tories), with more openness to reform of the British system, thereby saving the party.

Sunday, February 6^th -- Reagan Day

Upon the death of her father, King George VI (remembered in the film The King's Speech), on February 6, 1952, twenty-five-year-old Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary succeeded to the British throne, becoming Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Head of the Commonwealth. This marks the 59^th year of her reign; the 60^th year is the "Diamond Jubilee." Ninety-seven days from now, on May 10^th, Queen Elizabeth will pass George III to become the second-longest-reigning monarch in English history. Only Queen Victoria's reign of 63 years and 216 days remains ahead of her.

Children's Authors & Illustrators Week is devoted to celebrating and recognizing authors and illustrators who create books for young people. Some of the best and most beloved writing and artwork is created ostensibly for children -- and even books like Captain Underpants and Everybody Poops are actually quite creative, enjoyable, and strangely educational.

Jell-O Week is celebrated annually the second full week in February. It is not an invention of Kraft Foods -- the first Jell-O Week was officially declared by the Utah legislature in 2001. Utah leads the nation in annual Jell-O consumption, mostly because Mormons can hardly imagine a salad that does not involve cutting up fruits or vegetables and embalming them in flavored-and-colored gelatin derived from collagen in cow and pig bones, hooves, and connective tissue. Nothing says "love" like animal waste products jiggling on a salad plate.

Ronald Wilson Reagan's 100^th birthday is today. Born in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, he became the 40^th president of the United States, serving from1981 to 1989). Previously he was a sportscaster, a motion picture actor, president of the Screen Actors Guild union, and governor of California (1967-74). He was the oldest person to become President, and also the first divorced person. Born in Tampico, IL.

Contrary to rumor, Reagan did not free Eastern Europe or end Communism in the Soviet Union -- Gorbachev and Yeltsin did -- and while he was bold in his encounters with Communism, Reagan was completely inept in his handling of Muslim terrorists and the nations that sponsored them. He was a better president than his critics on the Left (including the national news media) gave him credit for, but nowhere near as good as his worshipers (the Republican Party) claim that he was.

This is Super Bowl Sunday -- specifically Super Bowl XLV between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers. Wait ... isn't this a replay of a much-earlier Super Bowl? Nope. Though the Packers have been in the Super Bowl four times and won it three (I in 1967, II in '68, and XXXI in '97) -- and the Steelers have played in the Super Bowl seven times and won it six (IX in '75, X in '76, XIII in '79, XIV in '80, XL in '06, XLIII in'09), they have never faced each other in the final game of the season.

Even in the NFL championship games (before the Super Bowl era), Green Bay won six out of eight times it played; Pittsburgh, though it was the fifth oldest NFL franchise, never appeared in an NFL championship game. So in the whole history of the NFL, it has never come down to the Steelers vs. the Packers for the whole chimichanga, till now.

Monday, February 7^th -- Man for all Seasons Day

Charles Dickens was born on this day in 1812. For a while, the author of David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and A Christmas Carol was as popular throughout the English-speaking world as J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, and Stephanie Meyer combined. Dickens's books were usually serialized in newspapers, making them accessible to families that couldn't afford to buy hardcover volumes. He wrote for the masses, and even if no teacher required students to read his work, many of his novels would still be in print because, like Austen and Twain, he is professor-proof. Even high school students learn that being forced to read Dickens is way better than, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, or Henry James.

This is the start of Just Say No to Powerpoint Week. Businesspeople, use this week to actually talk to and communicate with your audiences rather than merely slideswiping them! Putting together a presentation on Powerpoint is not a substitute for vigorous, excited, clear speaking.

Sir (and Saint) Thomas More was born on this day in 1478, in London. Son of barrister and judge Sir John More, Thomas received an excellent education and bettered it through his private studies, his correspondence with most of the great minds of Europe, and his own thinking and writing. A deeply religious man, he was appointed Chancellor of England by King Henry VIII -- the first non-priest to be given that office -- and was a superb judge. But he failed at politics (mostly because he wasn't interested in playing the game) when he refused to accept the legality of King Henry's separation of the Church of England from the Catholic Church after the Pope refused to allow him to divorce Catherine of Aragon.

For his stubborn integrity, Thomas More was convicted of treason and beheaded on 6 July 1535. His books and his reputation lived on -- his philosophical fiction Utopia is still studied, and gave its name to all idealized societies, and in the Catholic Church, he was so revered that eventually he was beatified and then canonized in 1935 as a Catholic Saint, meaning that he is regarded as one who is holy enough to intercede with Christ on behalf of those who seek his favor.

On a more grisly note, after his head was displayed (as was the custom) for a month on London Bridge, his daughter Margaret Roper bribed an official to give it to her instead of throwing it in the river as the law prescribed. In 1824, a head found in a leaden box in the Roper vault at St. Dunstan's in Canterbury was presumed to be More's, making it the only direct relic of the saint.

But for most of us, perhaps the best way to make contact with this great man is through the film that I regard as the greatest ever made, A Man For All Seasons, adapted by Robert Bolt from his own stage play, directed by four-time Oscar-winner Fred Zinnemann, and starring Paul Scofield as Thomas More in his Oscar winning performance. The cast included Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Robert Shaw, Orson Welles, John Hurt, Corin Redgrave, and other less-known but excellent actors. If you've never seen it, do.

Tuesday, February 8^th -- Sensawunda Day

William Tecumseh Sherman, arguably the best commander in the Union Army during the Civil War -- and, if it weren't for Stonewall Jackson, the best in either army -- was born on this day in 1820, in Lancaster, Ohio. Like his partner in victory, Ulysses S. Grant, Sherman understood that the only way to defeat the South was to make it economically impossible for them to continue fighting. His grinding assault on the heartland of the South culminated in his bold (and perilous) decision to cut loose from his own lines of supply and communications and march from Atlanta to Savannah overland, devastating the most productive farmland in the South along the way.

Sherman was also an incisive and brutally honest writer, and it's worth remembering a few of the things he said:

"War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."

"One class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out."

"It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."

"If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast."

"If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking."

"I think I understand what military fame is; to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers."

"Grant stood by me when I was crazy, and I stood by him when he was drunk, and now we stand by each other."

"Courage -- a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it."

"Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."

"This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war."

And when politicians tried to get him to run for President, his refusal was so clear it has gone down in history: "If nominated, I will not accept; if drafted, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve."

The founding writer of science fiction (though the genre was not name until the 1920s), Jules Verne, was borne in Nantes, France, on this day in 1828. Through books like Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, The Mysterious Island, Robur the Conqueror, and Master of the World, he celebrated marvelous new technologies and heroic explorations and achievements, entertaining millions throughout the world. Most of all, he was the master of filling readers with a "sense of wonder," an element of science fiction that through common use is now spoken (only half-jokingly) as a single word, sensawunda. Nobody did it better.

Wednesday, February 9^th -- Futility Day

The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on this day in 1964. They performed 5 songs before a screaming audience of 728. The estimated viewership for that night's show was 73 million people, making it the most-viewed U.S. television program in history up to that time. I was in seventh grade at the time, and because my parents had an ironclad rule against watching TV on the Sabbath, I didn't see the show, making me rather a pathetic figure among my friends. My father consoled me by saying, "They're just a singing group," though my mother's opinion was that they were just a group, because "you can't really call that singing."

William Henry Harrison, the "hero" of the "battle" (actually a massacre) at Tippecanoe, was born on this day in 1773. The ninth president of the United States, he is noted for giving the longest inaugural address in history and then serving the shortest term -- only 32 days. These two records are related -- that long speech took place in a snowstorm and he caught a fatal case of pneumonia. That is why Harrison's birthday is commemorated as "Futility Day."

Since Harrison was the first President to die in office, his Vice President, John Tyler, faced a constitutional crisis: Was Tyler now President, or did he remain Vice President while governing the country? He unilaterally assumed the title and took the oath as President, a precedent now recognized in law, and then did a reasonably good job of governing despite the handicap of being labeled "His Accidency" by his opponents.

Harrison's grandson, Benjamin, was later elected President between the two terms of Grover Cleveland, making him the only President to succeed and be succeeded by the same man. Apparently Harrisons can't be elected President without setting some bizarre record.